


Some Infinities

by emery_and_lead



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Brother-Sister Relationships, Canonical Character Death, Child Neglect, Co-Dependency, Communications Failure, Erik is an asshole, Erik is not a Happy Bunny, F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mild Language, Misunderstandings, Oh The Teenage Melodrama, Sexual Content, Shaw is EVIL in Every Universe, Support Group AU, Teenage AU, Terminal Illnesses, car crashes, medical inaccuracy, mentions of drug abuse, non-powered
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-21
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2017-12-24 04:45:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/935525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emery_and_lead/pseuds/emery_and_lead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Head injuries are weird. All your memories can return to you, you can regain cognitive function and put the story cards in the right order and name the President of the United States, and underneath it all you can still be royally fucked up.</i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Erik Magnus Lehnsherr does <i>not</i> need therapy. He's held together by nuts and bolts and a big titanium plate in his head, but he's okay with that, most days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In which Erik is NOT HAPPY, he was dealing JUST FINE on his own, and the kids in his support group are FUCKING IDIOTS. He thinks he might actually kill them all by the end of the first week and never lose a single minute of sleep over it.
> 
> Sort of inspired by _The Fault In Our Stars_ and a comment my sister made in passing about the catch-22 of Erik being the worst-ever candidate for group therapy, despite needing it rather desperately. The support group is more a band of misfits than anything, because nobody's medical issues are even remotely related, which is maybe not 100% realistic, but just go with it. Beth Israel Hospital is a real hospital, but all details are made up because I have never been there and don't know the layout. All medicine is punk medicine, and therefore highly inaccurate, because I am not a doctor. Warning for the use of the word "retarded" as an insult.

3:04 AM, behind a curtain on the floor of the ICU in Manhattan's Beth Israel Hospital, Erik Lehnsherr learns to breathe again.

 

A tangled mass of tubes protrudes from his nose and mouth and chest. It writhes in the air above him with every breath he takes, making odd clicking, rasping sounds, the hush-hush of serrated plastic rubbing back against itself. His scalp is stitched closed over a metal plate fused to his skull, holding the bones together where they'd cracked and begun to drift apart, Pangea splitting into disparate continents over the hot, shifting matter beneath.

 

Down the hallway, Jakob Lehnsherr sits in the waiting room staring at his hands as they clench and unclench in his lap, the skin pulling taught around his knuckles. Three walls separate him from his son where he struggles for breath through a puncture in his lung, not yet fully healed. Jakob looks up at the sound of footsteps from the hallway and watches the doctor's approach through haunted eyes.

 

The woman stops before him, white coat fluttering around her calves. "Mr. Lehnsherr," she says, half question, half statement.

 

"Yes."

 

"Hello. I'm Doctor Moira MacTaggert, the neurologist working with Erik. Your son is going to be all right."

 

Jakob lets out a heavy breath, nearly a sob; he's been crying, but he doesn't cry now.

 

"That said, I wanted to talk to you about how to proceed from here, and what to expect. Head injuries are… tricky. We are expecting Erik to regain full cognitive ability, to retain all of his memories—although his recollection of the accident itself might never return to him: but that's completely normal. Often, the brain blocks the memory of a traumatic experience in the interest of self-preservation. However, sometimes, brains that have been damaged—especially developing brains—although they return to full function, there might be more subtle, and far more persistent problems. It is very likely that you will notice discrepancies in Erik's personality. Maybe he'll be less focused, perhaps he'll be more irritable—there are as many possibilities as there are instances of this phenomenon. It may be as simple as a change in taste—perhaps he used to like a food that he now finds distasteful, maybe he likes music he never would have listened to before. But rest assured, if any of these things occur, it is not a sign that your son's brain is damaged, only that it's… changed. The very chemistry of his brain is different. Don't be alarmed if he feels emotions that confuse or scare him: try to talk through them with him. Be as supportive as possible, because he may become frustrated with the changes he perceives in himself. He needs to feel confident that he can bring his concerns to you so that you can help him, can call in help if you need it."

 

Jakob gives a slow nod and swallows thickly. "But my boy will survive? Of this, you are certain, Frau Doktor?"

 

"Absolutely."

______________________________________

 

"I'm not going."

 

Jakob turns to give Erik a look, chin down and eyes stern. "Erik."

 

Erik huffs and shifts to slouch lower in his seat, jaw set. "I don't care. Dad.  _Why_ do you want me to go so badly?" He throws his hands up in the air, then slaps them back down on his thighs. "I don't get how it's so central to your life. It's not like  _you're_ going to be sitting there, getting life affirming group hugs and crying in a hippie circle without the weed. The weed is the only reason to sit in a hippie circle, because hippie circles are so retarded the only time you don't care is when you're high as fuck."

 

Jakob gives Erik another look, but glances quickly away again as the light turns green. "Erik, your language. Do not speak to your Papi so. You go because Doktor MacTaggert recommends it."

 

Rolling his eyes, Erik sits back in his seat, hard. He turns to face his father, wrinkling his nose and pitching his voice higher. "Please. Dad. I don't want to go. I promise I'll never swear again."

 

Jakob makes a neat right, hands steady on the wheel, eyes steady on the road ahead. "You are going to meeting of Support Group, Erik. Is good for you. Come: is only kids, no boring grown-ups. You will make friends."

 

"I don't need friends."

 

Jakob glances sidelong at his son and hitches one eyebrow up, unimpressed. "You need friends. You stay home so much, you get mean and cranky, like you are mean and cranky now, and make your poor Papi cry. Do you want to make your Papi cry, Erik?"

 

Erik lets his jaw drop, his brows drawing together. "Oh my God, Dad, you would not cry, I have never made you cry."

 

"Your Mutter would cry, Erik." Jakob says, solemn, his momentary gaze intent, unmistakable, but gone again as quickly. "She cries because her boy is lonely."

 

Erik crosses his arms again, glaring forward through the windshield. "She cries because  _you're_ lonely."

 

Immediately, Erik turns to stare at his father as Jakob's hands tighten slightly on the wheel, imperceptible but for the sudden stark pallor of the skin over his knuckles. Erik uncrosses his arms to scrub a hand through his hair and down his face, stopping with his palm over his nose. 

 

"… Shit. Dad. I'm sorry."

 

Jakob stares straight ahead, eyes locked on the road. He takes a breath and slowly relaxes his grip on the wheel. "We will not talk now, Erik. Listen to your music."

 

Erik fiddles with his iPod for a moment, distractedly, pressing an earbud into his ear only to take it out again. He steals a glance at his father's face, winces, and turns back to the devise in his hands. The music breaks the silence for a moment, tinny and too loud through the earbuds, then cuts off just as quickly. "… Dad, are you… are you mad?"

 

Jakob lets out a long breath through his nose and shakes his head slowly. "I am okay. Not mad. Just little bit disappointed. We will not talk, now."

 

Erik fidgets in his seat for a moment, taps his iPod in a staccato rhythm against his knee, shifts his shoulders against the seat. "… Fine," he says, eventually, his sigh long and put-upon. "Fine, I'll go to the stupid Support Group. But I'm not hugging  _anybody."_  


Jakob looks at his son and smiles a little, earning a grudging quirk of Erik's lips, a softening around the eyes. "Will you not even hug your old Papi goodbye?"

 

Erik's grin stretches wide, sharp and sudden. "Maybe if you ask really, really nicely."

 

"I will beg on bended knee. Will this suffice?"

 

When they pull up to the support group building, parked so close to the curb Erik can barely open the door for fear of scraping paint off the bottom, his father doesn't beg on bended knee, but Erik hugs him anyway, across the center console. "Bye, Dad," he says, gruffly, as Jakob pulls him in to press a kiss to his hairline.

 

"Goodbye! I see you later, Erik. Have fun, liebling!" He leans across the passenger seat to wave to Erik through the window.

 

"Don't worry, I won't! You realize, now that I'm going, I don't need to keep my promise not to swear, right?" Erik calls back, scowling slightly even as he lifts a hand to wave back. He sees his father laughing deeply, leant forward over the steering wheel as the car pulls back out onto the street. Erik watches it until it turns the corner, then slouches off toward the squat brick building where Support Group meets, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched forward, kicking sullenly at the tufts of dying grass growing up through deep cracks in the sidewalk.

 

 Erik doesn't really know what he expected to find, walking into a Support Group meeting in the old rectory of Saint Margaret's Church in some half-forgotten town just east of Yonkers; maybe a perfectly proportioned circle of little plastic chairs, the kind from elementary school cafeterias, short backrest digging into the small of Erik's back, crooked legs wobbling under his weight. Maybe some bare collapsable tables pushed up against the far wall with boxed coffee from Dunkin' Donuts and stacks of styrofoam cups. 

 

There _are_  two collapsable tables lining the back wall, but they're draped with white tablecloths, the corners lined up neatly, and the coffee machine is sleek, all graceful curves and gleaming chrome. In the center of the room is a circle of chairs, but it is a lopsided, imperfect circle and the chairs are armchairs, old and mismatched but comfortable-looking, interspersed with a love seat and a sofa long enough for three. There are kids, maybe fourteen total, standing in knots all around the room, talking and drinking coffee from ceramic mugs. 

 

One kid with a metal hand stands hipshot against one of the folding tables, an unlit cigar hanging from his mouth and a lighter sticking out of the breast pocket of his flannel shirt. He stares down at his prosthetic fingers as he flexes them, the metal clicking softly against itself, picks up a blue mug with his skin-and-bone hand and tosses it back. The way he winces as he swallows the coffee down suggests there might be a little something else mixed in, and Erik suddenly feels like he could really use a drink. Or something stronger.

 

If the Support Group funding backs a fucking monster of a coffee machine, maybe they'll get some weed for their hippie circle, after all.

 

Erik walks up beside the guy. "Erik Lehnsherr," he says, and doesn't offer his hand, instead snagging a green mug and turning to the coffee machine.

 

The boy snorts and lifts his cigar out of his mouth, flicking it before realizing it's not lit, then snorting again and clamping it back between his teeth. "Go fuck yourself."

 

Erik cants an eyebrow, but picks up his coffee and turns to the kid, nodding at his metal prosthetic. "Your hand is sick, man. Adamantium? God, I'd like to get my hands on some of that shit. Engineering breakthrough of the century."

 

The kid looks him up and down, slowly, then grunts again, this time in agreement. "McCoy rigged it up for me." He jerks his chin in the direction of a dorky-looking kid with big glasses standing by the sofa, talking to a pretty girl with long blonde hair and an odd, scaly quality to her skin. "Kid's a genius. Says there's a some odd percent chance I'll get into less fights if I can send 'em running before they get a punch in. Me personally? I hope it makes the fuckers piss their damn pants."

 

Erik smiles, wide and sharp, the one with too many teeth that his dad teases him over, tells him looks like a shark's smile when there's blood in the water. "A little terror goes a long way."

 

The boy grunts again and says, gruffly, "Name's Logan." Logan pulls his lighter out, flicks it open, makes as though to raise it to his mouth but stops himself, flicks it shut and drops it back down into his pocket. Then he looks over Erik's shoulder and shouts, "Hey, Raven! Where the hell's the professor?"

 

The blonde girl talking to McCoy turns half around so that her voice carries to Logan, but not quite far enough to meet his gaze. "Avoiding your sorry ass, Howlett!" she calls back with a grin, and Logan grins right back, more a bearing of teeth than a smile.

 

"You're cruel, dollface!" he shouts, lips still drawn back over his teeth.

 

"You're misogynistic, asshole!" She gives Logan one more wicked smile, then turns back to McCoy, who's begun gesturing wildly with his hands, eyes wide and earnest.

 

"The professor?" Erik asks, sharply. "I thought this was for kids only."

 

Before Logan can answer beyond a raised eyebrow, a kid in sunglasses walks up to them, sweeping a white cane in an arc before him and stopping right in front of Logan. Logan smiles his toothy, feral smile and says around the cigar in his mouth, "Table's there, Summers."

 

Erik can't see Summers' eyes through the dark tint of the sunglasses, but the way he moves his head conveys the eye roll just as well. 'Fuck off, Logan. You may be a dog, but you're not a seeing eye dog."

 

Logan's smile only sharpens. He moves the cigar out from between his teeth. "Oh yeah? What am I then, bub?"

 

Summers smiles right back, as though he can see Logan's bared teeth for himself. "A mutt."

 

Logan's upper lip curls up in a snarl, and he says, "Good thing I don't hit girls or blind guys."

 

"Maybe you should start, if you wanna keep your face pretty."

 

Logan raises his adamantium hand in a fist, eyes wild and smile so wide he looks unhinged, ready to lunge forward, but a shout from across the room stops him.

 

"Hey, guys! Prof's here!"

 

Everyone turns toward the door as a boy walks in, cardigan open and hands in his pockets, soft brown hair flopping down into bright blue eyes—so blue, blue like the center of a flame, and so achingly familiar. He grins around the room, open and painfully earnest, and Erik feels something constrict in his throat, as the boy says, brightly, "Moira tells me we should be expecting a new face today!"

 

Then recognition sparks behind his sternum. "Charles?!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles and Erik's first meeting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the obscenely slow update! I've been really busy lately, since it's my freshman year at college, but I hope it was worth the wait!

**Three Years Earlier**

 

 

It's Tuesday in the waiting room of Oliver Platt Brain Injury Rehabilitation Center, and the stiff wooden chair creaks as Erik shifts against the sickeningly cheerful pastel, swirl-patterned cushion.

 

"I don't think these chairs were actually made to be sat on." Erik turns to see Emma Frost sitting four seats down, back a straight, elegant line defined by perfect finishing-school posture. Dressed all in white, gloved hands folded, a fine powder dusts her skin like confectionary sugar. She's staring at the purple-and-blue swirled seat of the chair beside her with an oddly bored sort of distaste. "I guess it's here for appearances only, but I think it's horribly ugly. All that color; it's so…  _messy_."

 

A hollow sound from across the room, and she turns her disdainful expression on Mrs. Dunfree where she murmurs to herself across the room, rocking neurotically back and forth in her chair, a constant creak of straining wood that sets Erik's teeth slightly on edge. He thinks he hates this place more every time, feels it pulling at the frayed edges of his mind, thinks it  _doesn't help_ , that nothing ever could.

 

Emma somehow manages to look repulsed without wrinkling any of the skin on her face. "I don't know why they make us sit in here with  _her_. It's not as though  _we're…_ unstable."

 

Erik snorts and lets his lips tip just barely into a smile. "New form of therapy. Use the pain in our asses as distraction from our own screwed up minds. Although I suppose that's true of the chairs, too," he adds, quiet and vicious. Emma's laugh is clear and cold, like diamond striking stone. 

 

"Oh, Erik," she says: gleefully, although her expression doesn't change, "You're awful." It's more a compliment than a reprimand.

 

The first time he came in for Tuesday Session she was here in all her cold white glory, and Mrs. Dunfree sat across the room, steady movements and constant stream of words in soft self-reassurance; their time slots never change. An illusion of normalcy, a routine to build foundations within the mind. Erik hates it, the monotony of it, the weight of knowing he'll never get out until he's dead.

 

"Why the hell are you here anyway, Emma?" He is fourteen now, and doesn't stumble on the swear, doesn't feel its edges rough against his throat as he did when he was twelve and could still trick himself into thinking he had innocence to lose. It is an old argument, well-worn, but not entirely safe; the whetting of a blade that only gets sharper with time. Erik likes knowing he could get cut. It's something to prepare himself against.

 

"Oh, stop; I'd think you didn't want me here. You've hurt my feelings." Her voice has gone soft and injured, but her eyes remain hard, her face impossibly still.

 

Erik cants an eyebrow and smiles, wide and sharp. "Pretending to be normal?"

 

Emma flips her hair back over her shoulder and smooths down nonexistent wrinkles in her white miniskirt. "Tactical advantage. Underestimation is the best defense."

 

"You're so calculating. Positively cold-hearted." Erik's smile grows wider.

 

Emma refolds her hands primly in her lap. "Don't insult me. I'm delicate, you know, since the accident."

 

Erik knows why Emma is here; her report details the incident during a fashion show three years ago: a fellow model incensed by Emma's beauty and her cold poise, driven to violent rage and a shove off the end of the catwalk, and Emma has been exhibiting sociopathic tendencies ever since. Erik knows the truth, though: Emma exhibited sociopathic tendencies long before her fall off the platform and subsequent blow to the head. The accident simply allowed for an excuse, a way to treat Emma without losing face or tarnishing the family name. Her fall turned Emma into a tragedy rather than an abomination.

 

A nurse's head appears around the edge of the doorway, no other part of her body in view. "Emma Frost?" She poses it like a question, even though she has seen Emma once a week every week for over two years, even though she knows Emma on sight, knows her before she even sees her face. A whitewashed, colorless girl, and who else could it be?

 

Emma stands promptly and walks to the door, hips swaying. She gives Erik a half-mocking little wave and a cold smile over her shoulder as she disappears into the hallway beyond.

 

Mrs. Dunfree continues rocking and muttering in the far corner of the room, the chair straining and groaning beneath her, and Erik knows about stress fractures, knows he shouldn't grind his teeth, but he can't help hearing the screams of the wood and thinking that's what it must sound like to go mad.

 

When the bells on the front door sound, Erik looks up sharply, startled. He has always been the last session on Tuesdays, ever since his first visit to Platt's.

 

A man in dark glasses and a tuxedo holds the door open, and Erik expects an older, stately man to walk in, or a beautiful woman. Instead, it's a boy, shorter than Erik, and younger: maybe ten or eleven, judging by his round little nose, his cute freckled face. His blue and white sweater is lumpy and some of the threads at his elbow hang ponderously loose, like the maker moved on to a new string of yarn and forgotten to tie off the ends. Home-made, definitely, by someone of middling skill but the affection to make up for it; yet his shoes are new and well-polished, and his pants tailored to fit. "Thank you, Clarence," he says, his vowels long like an Englishman's, and he smiles up at the man with his hand still on the door. The man nods, smiling a little back, and lets the door close behind the boy as he steps inside.

 

His gaze sweeps the room, lingering for a moment on Mrs. Dunfree. He frowns, but not in disgust: sympathy, Erik realizes, just as the boy spots him as he turns sideways to look along the wall to his left. He flashes Erik a big, delighted smile, and although Erik scowls back, this doesn't seem to deter the boy, who comes over to sit in the chair directly beside Erik's, his smile still wide. 

 

"Hello," he says, voice as cheerful as his smile, and when Erik only stares at him, unimpressed, he adds, "I'm Charles." Erik raises an eyebrow, but Charles smiles obliviously on, his teeth straight and white and expensive: the kind of mouth, Erik thinks, that's just begging for a punch. "What's your name?"

 

He scowls for a moment longer, and hopes futilely that Charles will take the hint, but he just goes on staring at Erik expectantly and  _smiling._ He grits his teeth: he bets Charles has never had the slightest inclination to grind his teeth in his life. And if he did, he'd probably just buy some new ones, and pay for them in cash."Erik," he replies, as curtly as he can.

 

"Hello Erik," Charles says brightly. Erik expects Charles to keep smiling sunnily while trying to engage him in some endless, boring conversation about the weather or Erik's age or, God forbid, what Erik is in here for—he thinks he'd rather hear all about Charles' boat, or his rich-ass father, or his ocean yacht party boys' club or whatever—but he's surprised when Charles goes quiet beside him and begins to swing his legs, mouthing something to himself that Erik realizes is probably the words to a song.

 

Charles continues to sing silently to himself, keeping time with the sway of his feet, and Erik can't help it—he asks, "Who was that? The man you came in with."

 

"Hmmm?" Charles asks absently, distracted by his silent song. "Oh, that's Clarence. He's my driver."

 

A  _chauffeur_. Just as Erik had predicted. "I didn't know chauffeurs catered to ten year olds," Erik says, a little meanly.

 

"Oh, no, I'm twelve," says Charles earnestly, and Erik is surprised: all the boys he's ever known find insult with anyone who shaves a few years off in their estimates. Actually, most boys Erik knows would punch him in the mouth for his tone of voice alone.

 

"Nobody could have guessed. You don't  _look_ twelve,"Erik adds, just to test him.

 

Charles grimaces, but more in regret than anger. "I know," he sighs, dejected. "The chemo stops me growing very much, and I've got a bald head like a baby. Or an old man."

 

  
_Chemo._ Erik hadn't thought much about the other boy's bald head: the newest fashion, he'd thought, or something the boy's parents got him just so he'd look showy.Erik feels his gut twist in shame, but he swallows it down, and his voice doesn't strain when he asks, "Chemo? So… you've got cancer?"

 

"Yeah," says Charles, a little sadly, before he smiles again. "But they're going to take out my tumor soon. After that, I'll just have to come here for a few more weeks, and then I can let all my hair grow back."

 

"You won't have to take the chemo anymore?" Erik asks, curiously.

 

Charles falters slightly, and looks at Erik from the corner of his eye. "If it works," he replies softly.

 

"But don't they think it's going to?"

 

"They said… probably not." Charles looks down at his shoes, staring intently for a moment, before mustering a smile and turning toward Erik once again. "But maybe."

 

"Why doesn't your dad drive you, then?" Erik asks, just to change the subject, and maybe alleviate the sudden tight feeling squeezing his throat.

 

Charles starts a little, as though he didn't really expect the question, and frowns. "He's dead. I've got a step dad but he—I'm glad he doesn't drive me. Clarence is alright, even if he doesn't like to talk much."

 

"I don't like to either," Erik says: he scowls again, and reminds himself he doesn't have any use for friends.

 

Charles shrugs a little and tucks one leg up on the edge of his seat. "That's why I didn't talk to you, at first. I didn't think you'd like to."

 

Erik nods, and stares at the door where Emma disappeared ten minutes before. "My mother, too. She's dead, I mean," Erik admits, awkwardly, to fill the sudden silence, although he doesn't know why it starts to chafe at him.

 

"Oh," says Charles, softly. "I'm sorry." And by the moue of his mouth, and the way his eyes fall, his whole body along with them, it looks like he might actually mean it, and Erik doesn't know whether to laugh or—Erik doesn't know what to do with that.

 

It was a long time ago, he wants to say, but it wasn't: not really. Two years isn't a long time, not for a fourteen year old like Erik, who counts the time in moments missed, in the empty spaces: only two Hanukkahs, two birthdays, two summers between then and now, two motherless years against twelve. So, not so long ago, really, even if it sometimes feels like it's been decades. "I don't—" Erik says, and then stops, doesn't finish, because he doesn't know what he wants to say, if he wants to say anything at all. He tries to scowl but has a feeling it comes out wrong, not sharp enough. It's like the sharp edges he honed while talking with Emma have blunted; atrophied; were never there at all. He slumps back in his seat.

 

Charles is still looking at him, mouth pinched, eyes wide and dark and sad. "Yeah," he says, and nods, and Dr. Platt comes out to call Erik's name.

 

An hour later, on his way to the door as Erik comes out of his session, he passes Charles as he follows Dr. Platt, and Charles rests a hand on Erik's arm, for only a moment, without stopping, a touch that falls away as soon as he's out of reach. Erik can't help but look back, over his shoulder as Charles disappears after the doctor, before turning to his father in the doorway and following him outside.

 


End file.
